Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer, a Dutch-Canadian female-led WW2 media podcast. A new episode airs every Friday!

Ep 125 – 1941 – Pearl Harbor Panic and Zero Laughs

Subscribe:

Apple PodcastsCastBoxPocketCastsSpotifyRSSAmazon MusicYouTube

Support the podcast

Rosie the Reviewer is a passion project, built episode by episode. If you’d like to support what we do, you can help keep us on the air or pick up some Rosie merch. We’re working on more ways for you to get involved in the future.

This week on Rosie, we’re discussing the movie 1941 (1979), directed by Steven Spielberg. It’s a comedy, believe it or not, about invasion panic in Los Angeles after the attack on Pearl Harbor. With a cast that includes John Belushi, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Toshiro Mifune, and Christopher Lee, it should have been a lot funnier than it was.

Disclaimer: This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are as recorded.

Maartje: (00:14)
Welcome back to Rosie the Reviewer. This week we are discussing the movie 1941, which came out in 1979. It is a movie directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It’s a comedy, believe it or not, about an invasion panic in Los Angeles after the attack on Pearl Harbor in the summer of 1941. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for its special effects. And it’s available on Netflix. What did you think of this World War Two comedy, Sam?

Sam: (00:48)
I think Spielberg is perhaps not a comedy director. And that’s fine, because he has a very impressive body of work, and not everyone has to be good at everything. But it’s very farcical, very slapstick. If you’re into that kind of comedy, you might find some little nuggets in there that you enjoy. But broadly, I think it was trying to do a lot of stuff that it didn’t necessarily pull off. There was just so much going on. It lacked comedic timing. It lacked the understanding of the way jokes need to be set up — you need the setup, the carry through, and then the punchline. And it was just kind of like: unfunny gag, unfunny gag, unfunny gag, explosion.

Maartje: (01:32)
Ha!

Sam: (01:33)
Broadly I think it was a waste of the cast. There are so many funny people in this movie — it’s got John Belushi in it, it’s got John Candy. Not a film that I particularly enjoyed watching. I thought the execution was poor. What about you?

Maartje: (01:47)
I was interested in watching a comedy about World War Two because what a strange combination, right? And I laughed exactly zero times during my watch, so not very good. I do wonder if it’s the direction or the writing, or maybe it’s probably both. I thought it was quite sexist. There are a few women in this, quite a few, and they have a lot to say, but none of it is to advance their own plot. It’s all in favour of the man of the movie in a really cheap way, and I didn’t enjoy it very much. So yeah, not for me either. I’m kind of disappointed.

Sam: (02:25)
Yeah, the women are definitely all props. But I don’t think there’s a single male character that I thought had any kind of developed character arc, or a sense of their motivations or anything like that either.

Maartje: (02:37)
No, they’re kind of cartoony, almost all of them. I agree.

Sam: (02:41)
Yeah.

Maartje: (02:42)
Let’s get into the movie.

Sam: (02:52)
There is an opening card that says: “On December 7th, 1941, the naval air arm of the Imperial Japanese Fleet, in a surprise attack, struck the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor and hurtled an unsuspecting America into World War Two. American citizens were stunned, shocked, and outraged at this treacherous attack. On the West Coast, paranoia gripped the entire population as panic-stricken citizens were convinced that California was the next target of the Imperial Japanese forces. Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, Commander of the Army Third Corps, was given the responsibility of defending Southern California. Army and Marine units were mobilized. Anti-aircraft defense batteries were manned and made ready. Civilian defense operations sprang into action. For the first time since the Civil War, American citizens prepared to defend their homeland against an enemy whose first assault was expected anywhere, at any time, and in any force.”

Maartje: (03:48)
This felt to me like a Star Wars opening, except less cool somehow.

Sam: (03:54)
Yeah, it was good context, I guess. I don’t know that we’ve done too many home front movies about the United States, so good to know what the general response was on the West Coast.

Maartje: (04:02)
Yep. You have some extra context, right? For all of us unknowing people.

Sam: (04:05)
I do, yeah.

So there were a couple of things that fed into this paranoia on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor. One of these events — there were a few Japanese submarines sailing around the West Coast, and on the morning of February 23rd, 1942, a couple of months after Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine shelled the Ellwood oil field, which is about 12 miles west of Santa Barbara. It was the first naval bombardment of a US coastal target since the War of 1812. It inflicted very minimal damage — they destroyed a couple of small buildings, and I don’t believe there were any significant casualties. But the psychological impact was immediate. As you can imagine, this made people panic. They thought it was perhaps the first volley of an invasion. And then the following night, what is now believed to be a weather balloon was erroneously identified as Japanese aircraft, and this resulted in an anti-aircraft artillery barrage that killed five civilians. It was sneeringly referred to afterward as the Great Los Angeles Air Raid.

Maartje: (05:13)
That’s kind of cynical, isn’t it?

Sam: (05:16)
Yes. And then on a less humorous side, that same month, these incidents also fed into Roosevelt issuing the executive order that would be used to intern 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War Two. The West Coast in particular was designated a military exclusion zone, from which Americans of Japanese descent — even those who were citizens or who were born in the United States — were forced to leave without most of their belongings. And they were sent to live in concentration camps inland. This resulted in many of them losing their property and losing everything they had built up since coming to the United States. And little side note: we also did this in Canada. A commission appointed under the Carter administration in the ’70s found that there was little evidence that Japanese Americans had been disloyal, and that in fact the government had suppressed information indicating they did not pose a threat. And ultimately the government under the Reagan administration apologized in 1988 and paid out $1.6 billion in reparations.

Maartje: (06:16)
Imagine just using this as a tool to enforce your racist beliefs onto the Japanese people in America.

Sam: (06:25)
Yeah. I feel like it’s gotten a little more attention in the past few years because the actor George Takei was interned in one of these camps during World War Two, and I think that story has become a bit more well known, which is good.

Maartje: (06:35)
Yes. Yeah, I didn’t know there were that many Japanese Americans interned by this order. That’s a lot.

Sam: (06:43)
It is, yeah. And I think they were disproportionately impacted too, because many Japanese people who had come from Japan had settled on the West Coast. So there were a lot more Japanese people in California, for example, than there would have been on the East Coast. And so this would have represented a significant portion of the total number of Japanese Americans.

Maartje: (07:04)
Yeah. Wow. Crazy.

The movie begins in earnest on the Northern California coast on Saturday, December 13th, 1941. We meet a woman — she’s played by Susan Backlinie — who hops into the ocean for a swim, when suddenly a Japanese submarine rises out of the water, helmed by Commander Akiro Mitamura, played by Toshiro Mifune, and a German advisor, Captain Wolfgang von Kleinschmidt, played by Christopher Lee. They are looking for a target that will strike fear into the hearts of the Americans, and they decide they will attack Hollywood. And in this scene there’s an obvious callback to Jaws, both in the music and the fact that actress Susan Backlinie played the shark attack victim in the opening scene of Jaws. So this I thought was kind of funny, as far as the funny goes. That’s the only thing I find amusing.

Sam: (08:01)
Yes, this actually seemed like a clever callback, and then it sort of went downhill from here.

Maartje: (08:06)
Not for her though — she gets lifted onto the submarine fully naked for no reason.

Sam: (08:14)
Yeah. We’ve seen Toshiro Mifune in a couple of other things, and it was nice to see him again. And Christopher Lee is always a treat, although I don’t know that either of them got a script that gave them fully realized characters.

Maartje: (08:27)
No. They’re almost a bit satirical, I want to say — both of them. And I initially didn’t even recognize Christopher Lee, but that’s on me. He speaks German in this, and fun fact: I had to turn on the English captions on this movie because there were no subtitles in Dutch for either the Japanese or the German. So I was like, I have no idea what they’re saying. Let me see if there’s anything in English.

Sam: (08:55)
You know what is kind of fun, too, that you might not notice if you have the subtitles on, is that Mitamura is speaking Japanese and von Kleinschmidt is speaking German, but they both understand each other without translators.

Maartje: (09:05)
Yes. Very funny — well, I say very funny, it didn’t make me laugh, but it is just the kind of movie thing where you don’t even think about it that in real life that wouldn’t have worked obviously.

Sam: (09:17)
Yeah, I think it’s deliberate. I think it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s hard to notice

Maartje: (09:21)
Yeah.

Sam: (09:21)
if you have the subtitles on.

Maartje: (09:22)
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I didn’t even think about it. That’s a good one actually.

Sam: (09:26)
We are introduced to Motor Sergeant Frank Tree, played by Canadian Dan Aykroyd, and his tank crew, who are eating breakfast at a diner. And this is another one — Dan Aykroyd is so funny, and it’s just unfortunate

Maartje: (09:38)
Mm-hmm.

Sam: (09:39)
that he’s in this movie that is not funny. Anyway, they get into a scuffle with diner employees Wally Stevens, played by Bobby Di Cicco, and his friend fry cook Dennis DeSoto, played by Perry Lang, who end up being fired after this altercation. Wally intends to attend a dance contest later with his girlfriend Betty Douglas, played by Dianne Kay.

Maartje: (10:00)
I think my favorite scene is in this part, because when we meet them in the kitchen of the diner, I enjoy the little dance they do as they’re making the diner food. And that’s my favorite bit of the whole movie, but it’s only like two minutes, if that. So I guess that’s all I get in terms of enjoyment.

Sam: (10:21)
Yeah, that was a fun little scene.

Maartje: (10:22)
We go to Death Valley later that day. United States Army Air Corps pilot Captain Wild Bill Kelso, played by John Belushi, searches out Japanese forces extremely chaotically. He narrowly avoids a crash — he’s in a plane, obviously. He’s kind of crazy looking, smoking a cigar and all kinds of crazy stuff as he’s flying this plane. The plane is kind of cool though.

Sam: (10:49)
Yes, he spends most of the movie determined that he’s chasing down shadowy Japanese planes that don’t appear to really exist. He’s definitely a caricature of an American pilot in a war film — chomping on that cigar, as you’ve said.

Maartje: (11:02)
Yeah.

Sam: (11:03)
Major General Joseph Stilwell, who is based on a real person, is played by Robert Stack. He holds a press conference in Long Beach. His aide, Captain Loomis Burkhead, played by Tim Matheson, meets Stilwell’s new secretary, Donna Stratton, played by Nancy Allen. Knowing that she loves planes — with a decided eyebrow wiggle — he gets her into the cockpit of a B-17 bomber, where in his attempt to seduce her, he accidentally releases a bomb, just as Stilwell is reassuring everyone that everything is fine. But everyone escapes the resulting explosion unscathed, because this is a comedy.

Maartje: (11:37)
The innuendo with the plane is absolutely horrible. But thankfully Donna also doesn’t appreciate it initially, so at least I’m outraged but so is she. So that’s okay, I guess.

Sam: (11:52)
Stilwell was the commanding officer of the 7th Division at Fort Ord, California in this period. He became known as Vinegar Joe, and he would go on after this to be sent to China in 1942 after Pearl Harbor. He spoke Chinese, and he had been posted in China before. He served as a military advisor to the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, as part of American efforts to keep China in the war — you know, to divert some of the Japanese forces in that direction. He was the US commander of the China-Burma-India Theater and later the Deputy Commander of the Southeast Asia Command. But because the China-Burma-India Theater was not an official theater of operations and did not have an overall US commander, Stilwell largely commanded Chinese troops and had to work closely with British and Chinese leadership. And by all accounts, that was a stormy and fractious relationship. He was a controversial figure. Some historians even go as far as to assign him some of the blame for the US-backed Chinese government’s loss to the Communists in 1949 — which, you know, none of that relates to this movie, but I just thought it was interesting. Through the Lend-Lease program, the US was sending a lot of supplies to China, and Stilwell had his fingers on all of those pies as well. That was one of the reasons why he was always at loggerheads with Chiang Kai-shek about how the supplies were being used. But in this film we will see that he goes on to watch the movie Dumbo, even while his troops are effectively rioting in the streets outside. And this is based on real life — Stilwell was a cinephile, and in December of 1941 he watched the animated feature Dumbo twice in the

Maartje: (13:31)
I feel like this character in the movie is probably the most serious of the characters portrayed. He’s a decent actor in this. I kind of enjoyed him a little — maybe because it was less focused on the comedy, and he was more of a really stoic, no-nonsense guy who was like, let them figure it out themselves.

Sam: (13:54)
I did get a slight kick out of it when he was watching Dumbo and you could tell he had seen it so many times, because he was reciting the dialogue along with it.

Maartje: (14:02)
Yes, it’s quite cute. And I also wonder — as they were shooting that scene, if it was really playing, because it looked real to me.

Betty and her friend Maxine Dexheimer, played by Wendy Jo Sperber, who had just joined the USO, are preparing to attend the dance later that evening. Wally arrives and they inform him that he won’t be able to attend, as the dance is for servicemen only and he’s not a serviceman. Sergeant Tree arrives and informs Betty’s parents, Ward, played by Ned Beatty, and Joan, played by Lorraine Gary, that they must install an anti-aircraft gun in her yard. One of the soldiers, Corporal Chuck Sitarski, played by Treat Williams, attempts to flirt with Betty but soon discovers Wally hiding. The soldiers throw him into a garbage truck. Poor Wally.

Sam: (14:54)
There’s a brief part with the Sitarski character where he grabs Betty and they’re dancing and it’s obviously just a dummy of her, and he’s throwing her around — that was mildly funny. But broadly I thought his whole storyline, where he’s trying to take her away from her boyfriend against her will, was kind of rapey. It wasn’t funny to me.

Maartje: (15:10)
It’s insanely rapey, it’s not even kind of rapey. Especially towards the end — he properly tries to rape her on screen. Gross.

Sam: (15:20)
Yeah, and Betty doesn’t get to get away from him on her own steam or anything like that. She just gets dragged around.

Maartje: (15:27)
And I also don’t like that they made her friend — who is the larger friend character — suddenly decide that she wants him instead. I think it’s just gross.

Sam: (15:40)
Yeah. Maxine is following him around and trying to get his attention because she is interested in him. But I’m also just like, I don’t know, man — if some guy were chasing me around and not leaving me alone, I feel like my friends would be like, “Back off.” What kind of friendship

Maartje: (15:56)
Right.

Sam: (15:56)
is this?

Maartje: (15:57)
I like Treat Williams as an actor — I know him from a TV show called Everwood, where he plays a small-town doctor, and he’s nice in that. But then you see him in a role like this when he was younger and you’re like, that’s such a shame. I mean, I’m sure it’s not his fault — it’s clearly in the writing. But still, it’s just gross.

Sam: (16:18)
Yeah, I think we’re supposed to think it’s funny that he’s chasing her all around the joint, and it’s just — I’m like, no. No women were involved in writing this, huh?

Maartje: (16:27)
I do wonder, by the way — I can’t remember when Grease came out, but I do wonder if some of the dancing was almost inspired by this, or the other way around. It’s pretty similar at some point.

Sam: (16:42)
Yeah, I guess they’re just jitterbugging. It’s probably just the same style.

The Japanese submarine is lost due to a malfunctioning compass, so a raiding party goes ashore and captures lumberjack Hollis Wood, played by Slim Pickens. He quickly swallows the toy compass that came in the box of popcorn he has on him, and the crew attempt to make him give it back through some toilet humor, but Hollis manages to escape the submarine.

Maartje: (17:10)
Yeah, again not very funny. It’s funnier when you’ve written it down just now than it was in the movie. Also, of course, the joke is that they are trying to bomb Hollywood, but it’s clearly not right on the ocean, so they’re like, how are you going to do that? And also “Hollis Wood” sounds like “Hollywood” to the Japanese, who can’t speak English very well. It’s kind of cheap humor, all of it put together.

Sam: (17:36)
Yeah, it’s another one of those gags that doesn’t really feel like it had enough follow-through to actually be funny.

Maartje: (17:42)
Yeah.

Burkhead, having washed out of pilot training, takes Donna to the 501st Bomb Dispersion Unit to borrow a plane, where he finds Colonel “Madman” Maddox, played by Warren Oates, and his men — armed to the teeth and paranoid that the Japanese are already attacking. Maddox loans him a recon plane, which Burkhead and Donna attempt to use for their own purposes, but it lacks a radio and they end up on the receiving end of friendly fire because they’re mistaken for Japanese. Not great.

Sam: (18:15)
Yeah, definitely.

Sitarski attempts to dance with an unwilling Betty at the USO party, but Wally disguises himself as a sailor and manages to sneak in, and the two reunite for the jitterbug contest. Sitarski chases Wally around the room, eventually igniting a massive brawl between all of the servicemen present. It eventually spills out onto the street — everyone’s fighting. Stilwell has refused to leave his peaceful screening of Dumbo, so Tree and his tank crew show up to break up the fight, because he hates to see Americans fighting Americans.

Maartje: (18:50)
Yes, and he does a whole speech about it. It’s a bit meh.

Sam: (18:54)
I couldn’t tell if we were supposed to be inspired by the speech or if it was supposed to be a comedy speech. That wasn’t entirely clear to me. Also, John Candy and Mickey Rourke are in the tank crew scenes, and they are obviously big-name actors. But there’s just so much going on that I didn’t end up including their characters in the notes, because they don’t really contribute in any meaningful way to the plot.

Maartje: (19:15)
Both things you’ve just said are just kind of sad, right? We don’t know if it’s a serious speech or not, so it’s not funny enough to be a funny speech, but it’s also not serious enough to be inspiring. So it’s kind of sad. Then you’ve got these two great actors who have nothing to do. And yeah, the whole thing is just so disappointing.

Sam: (19:37)
Yeah, it’s not ideal.

Maartje: (19:38)
Wild Bill Kelso — that’s the actual pilot who knows how to fly a plane — perceives the recon plane containing Burkhead and Donna and shoots it down into the La Brea Tar Pits. And there’s this running joke that Donna can only reach, let’s say, a heightened state if she’s in a plane that’s flying, so it’s a stupid gag that’s really sexist and I hate it. Meanwhile, Kelso’s plane is also mistaken for a Japanese fighter — I don’t know why exactly, because it doesn’t look like one, but that’s okay. The ground crews begin firing at him, including two men, Herbie, played by Eddie Deezen, and Claude, played by Murray Hamilton, of the Ground Observer Corps, who have been stationed at the Santa Monica amusement park to keep watch on the water, in disguise from the top of a Ferris wheel that they’re kind of stuck on. And one of them has a puppet, so there’s some puppet humor in there as well.

Sam: (20:37)
Yeah. Just when you thought, you know what this movie needs? A puppet.

Maartje: (20:40)
It really did not need a puppet, and the puppet was also not funny.

Sam: (20:44)
Yeah. Honestly, they could have dropped a few gags from this movie and focused more on the ones they did include, and I think that would have made it a lot better.

Maartje: (20:53)
Yes, I agree.

Sam: (20:54)
Kelso narrowly manages to land his plane on Hollywood Boulevard. When Stilwell arrives amidst all of the fighting, Kelso tells him about the Japanese submarine he spotted off the pier. By now, Wally has managed to rescue Betty from Sitarski with some help from Maxine, who in turn has been chasing Sitarski around. Wally ends up taking control of the tank crew when Sergeant Tree gets wounded — he gets a knock on the head and he’s rendered senseless, unable to direct his troops. And Wally happens to be wearing a uniform that has stripes on the sleeve, so they’re like, this guy knows what he’s doing, let’s get him over here.

Wally’s tank and Kelso on a motorcycle race toward the harbor to confront the Japanese sub.

Maartje: (21:34)
All of this on paper sounds pretty funny to me. It just didn’t work in the movie. And there’s also so many people falling over all the time, and they’re also not funny.

Sam: (21:46)
Yes. I did read that one time when John Belushi fell — I believe it was off a plane wing — he landed on his head. That happened in real life and he ended up having to get medical attention for it. But it was funny, so they left it in.

Maartje: (21:59)
No, I think that’s when our fake pilot and his not-girlfriend are playing around in the airplane.

Back at Betty’s house, Ward has begun firing the anti-aircraft gun installed in his yard at the submarine, and the whole ordeal kind of destroys his house in the process. The submarine returns fire at the amusement park — since all of its lights are on, turned on by one of Betty’s brothers — and knocks a Ferris wheel into the ocean. Also not funny. Von Kleinschmidt tries to force the Japanese to submerge, but they want an honorable victory and they toss him overboard. Also unfunny.

Sam: (22:36)
Yeah, I was like, what is the point of this character?

Maartje: (22:39)
Yeah.

Sam: (22:40)
I guess we need a Nazi in this.

Maartje: (22:41)
Yeah, and they hate each other too on the submarine, so they don’t even have that much chemistry as characters.

Sam: (22:52)
Yeah, there was a part at the beginning with the anti-aircraft gun where Sergeant Tree is explaining to Ward what he is not supposed to do with it. He’s like, whatever you do, don’t do this, and don’t set it up like this, and don’t do that — basically giving him step-by-step instructions of how to set it up while telling him not to do it. And then when Ward is setting it up, having decided he’s going to fire back at the Japanese, and his wife is like, don’t do it — he’s repeating those instructions of what not to do to himself while he’s doing it. Meanwhile Betty’s brothers are running around doing kids’ stuff. That part I guess was mildly entertaining.

Maartje: (23:27)
Yes, I feel like this whole anti-aircraft gun bit was the funniest in the first place.

Sam: (23:33)
The tank and submarine exchange fire, destroying the pier and dunking the tank as well as Kelso and his motorcycle into the water. Kelso then climbs aboard the submarine and demands they take him to Tokyo.

Maartje: (23:44)
The following day, Ward nails a symbolic Christmas wreath to his front door, but in doing so sends the remainder of his home crashing into the sea — and he doesn’t see it happening, so he opens the door and is surprised to find no house.

Stilwell looks out at the chaos around him and says it’s going to be a long war.

Sam: (24:06)
Yeah. And it felt like a long movie, so I guess that’s fitting.

Maartje: (24:10)
I’ll tell you a secret. I watched it at one and a half times the speed because I found it so boring.

Sam: (24:16)
Yeah, particularly later on in the film, where it was like: explosion, some guy falls over, something else unfunny happens. I started to kind of tune out a little bit.

Maartje: (24:25)
I wonder if there are people who do find it funny. I do think it’s a movie made for men more than for women in general. But I also wonder if the times are just so different that it’s not funny anymore, maybe?

Sam: (24:38)
I don’t know. I did look up some reviews, and I think broadly the popular consensus was very mixed. A lot of people didn’t like it. I did see some people defending that they liked the movie, but they were like, yeah, I’m willing to admit I had to watch it a couple of times — that kind of thing.

Maartje: (24:55)
Could it be me, honestly? I don’t want to see it again.

Now, I guess it’s interesting to see, like you said, a little bit on the American home front. But this is very much the end of the movie and also the end of our notes, because we don’t have any others. So I guess we have to rate this movie. But before you do, I would like to remind you that if you want to torture your friend, you can send this episode to them.

Sam: (25:21)
Every time you send this episode to a friend, Dan Aykroyd gets to be in a better movie.

Maartje: (25:25)
Amen. I’ll take that. I want to rate it. Unfunny innuendos out of ten, if we can.

Sam: (25:31)
Alright, how many unfunny innuendos out of ten would you rate this movie?

Maartje: (25:35)
I would give it 2 unfunny innuendos out of 10, honestly. I just thought it was really, really boring. And the two points are for Stilwell, I think, who I quite liked, and the fact that there are so many good actors in this who just didn’t get enough to do. I can’t make it any better. I guess I like the music and I like the shots of the plane flying. But other than that, I can’t really say anything good for it. How about you?

Sam: (26:03)
Yeah, tough one, because I’m like — I rated Pearl Harbor a 3. But I guess I will also give this 2 unfunny innuendos out of 10. It’s wild because on paper it’s like Spielberg directing, phenomenal cast, John Williams score. It should be much better than it is. And I think that’s part of why it gets such a low rating — because they had the tools to make this a great film. I’m sure there are people out there who will disagree and be like, well, you’re just not getting all the satire and everything. And it’s like, no, I get it. I just didn’t think it was that well executed. I thought it could have been much funnier than it was. I simply would not recommend this movie.

Maartje: (26:43)
No, me neither. If however there’s someone out there who can recommend another World War Two comedy to us that’s better, we’d love to hear it. And then we’ll watch it and talk about it.

Are you reading anything, my friend?

Sam: (27:05)
I am reading something. I am reading Hidden Patrons: Women and Architectural Patronage in Georgian Britain by Amy Boyington. She is a historian I follow on Instagram. I always find her videos very entertaining and interesting — they’re all about women in history and their lives. And so far this book is very fascinating as well. I’m enjoying it. What about you?

Maartje: (27:28)
I just finished a book and just picked up a new one called The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It’s the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2026. So I’m looking forward to reading it. It’s not very long, but it’s my fourth book in three weeks. So I’m on a roll.

Sam: (27:49)
Nice.

Maartje: (27:50)
Pretty soon on Rosie, we are covering another Spielberg movie. We’re doing Schindler’s List. So that’ll be a change of pace from this one. If you want to either read the book or watch the movie before the episode, I would start now if I were you.

Sam: (28:05)
A dramatic tonal shift from this week’s Spielberg movie, to be sure.

Maartje: (28:09)
I’m ready for it. I’m excited. Until next week, I guess. And thank you for listening to yet another episode of Rosie. You can follow us wherever you get your podcast, and rate us five stars or leave us a review. You can send this episode to a friend, or you can follow us on Instagram at Rosie the Reviewer Podcast. And if you want to rate this movie with us, you can visit our website rosiethereviewer.com. We’ll see you next week.

Sam: (28:35)
Bye.

1941 Trailer

1941 Historical Context

The Attack on Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese naval air force launched a surprise attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 Americans and drawing the US into the Second World War. The shock of the attack sent immediate ripples of panic across the American West Coast, which feared it would be the next target.

Wikipedia: Attack on Pearl Harbor

The Shelling of Ellwood

On February 23, 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced and shelled the Ellwood oil field near Santa Barbara, California. It was the first naval bombardment of the US mainland since the War of 1812. The physical damage was minimal, but the psychological impact was immediate: many West Coast Americans became convinced that a Japanese invasion was underway.

Wikipedia: Bombardment of Ellwood

The Great Los Angeles Air Raid

On the night of February 24-25, 1942, a weather balloon over Los Angeles was mistakenly identified as Japanese aircraft, triggering a prolonged anti-aircraft artillery barrage that killed five civilians. Three in traffic accidents during the blackout and two from heart attacks. The incident was later attributed to war nerves, and is sometimes called the Battle of Los Angeles.

Wikipedia: Battle of Los Angeles

Japanese American Internment

In February 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, resulting in the forced removal and internment of approx. 120,000 people of Japanese descent from the West Coast, including American citizens and U.S.-born individuals. A Carter-era commission later found little evidence of disloyalty, and in 1988 the Reagan administration formally apologised and paid $1.6 billion in reparations.

Wikipedia: Japanese American internment

General Joseph Stilwell

One of the characters we kinda liked is that of Major General Joseph W. Stilwell, who commanded the Army’s III Corps and was responsible for defending Southern California after Pearl Harbor. He went on to serve as military advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and commanded US forces in the China-Burma-India Theatre, earning a reputation for clashing with Allied leadership. He was a cinephile who, in December 1941, watched the animated feature Dumbo twice in the cinema.

Wikipedia: Joseph Stilwell

 

Other episodes mentioned


Discover more from the Rosie the Reviewer Podcast

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More episodes

Support the podcast

Rosie the Reviewer is a passion project, built episode by episode. If you’d like to support what we do, you can help keep us on the air or pick up some Rosie merch. We’re working on more ways for you to get involved in the future.